Apologists for paedophilia [sic]: As the Mail exposes more links between senior Labour figures and a vile paedophile group [sic], one man who was abused as a child asks them: why won't you admit you were wrong?

Apologists for paedophilia [sic]: As the Mail exposes more links between senior Labour figures and a vile paedophile group [sic], one man who was abused as a child asks them: why won't you admit you were wrong?

I see no point in responding, as anything I say would merely serve as another angle to keep the story going.

Not that they need my help. They have already run the story in various versions before, and will no doubt do so again at the slightest excuse, whether they have anything new to say or not. They know what keeps their punters happy, so they cannot be accused of incompetence in terms of generating sales. However, so far as this particular repetitious saga is concerned they are beginning to resemble the Daily Express, which constantly recycles a handful of stories (death of Princess Diana, disappeared toddler Madeleine McCann, miracle cure for arthritis, stormy weather ahead) to its elderly readership, who are presumably so far gone in senility they cannot remember they read the same thing only a few days before.

The Mail can take the downmarket Express route if they wish. It may be successful in sales terms, but it is hardly a recipe for respected journalism."

"In recent days I have been the subject of a politically-motivated smear campaign by the Daily Mail.

They have accused me of being an apologist for child sex abuse, of supporting a vile paedophile organisation, of having a relaxed attitude to paedophilia and of watering down child pornography laws. These are horrific allegations and I strongly deny them all of them.

This is not the first time the Daily Mail has made this horrible and untrue allegation. And, this is not the first time the Daily Mail has attacked me. The editor and proprietor of the Daily Mail are entitled to their political views and they are of course entitled to oppose what I stand for but they are not entitled to use their newspaper to smear me with innuendo because they disagree with me politically and hate my values.

I sincerely hope people won't believe these smears - I suspect even the Daily Mail doesn't believe them to be true. But given the seriousness and the aggression with which the Daily Mail are pursuing me, I feel that I need to put the facts in the public domain.

1. Allegation that I supported the lowering of the age of consent to 10

This is not true. I supported the equalisation of the age of consent (as set out in NCCL document “priorities and strategy for the executive committee June 1981") by making the age of consent the same for homosexual as well as for heterosexual sex.

2. Allegation that I opposed the law on incest

This is not true. The document they refer to was written by NCCL in 1976 before I started to work there.

3. Allegation that I was seeking to water down a proposed ban on child pornography.

This is not true. I supported the Protection of Children Bill 1978. At the start of the document it makes clear that “The NCCL deplores the exploitation of children whether in the form of use in commercial pornography or as victims of sexual assaults"

The submission argued for some amendments to guard against unintended consequences including:

- Parents being criminalised for taking pictures of their children on the beach or in the bath

- The use of pictures in sex education being criminalised

- We also proposed that the definition of indecent was too wide and instead proposed "obscene" as indecent was very broadly defined and could include Page 3 of the Sun.

The Mail have tried to make me guilty by way guilt by association.

NCCL was an organisation which anyone could apply to join and indeed any organisation could apply to be "an affiliate" on payment of a fee. When I was at NCCL there were around 6,000 members and nearly 1,000 affiliated organisations of which PIE was one.

Members and affiliates decided the organisation's policy at the AGM from year to year.

I was aware that because NCCL opposed censorship and supported gay rights, paedophiles had sought to exploit that and use NCCL as a vehicle to make their arguments. But by the time I came to work for NCCL this vile organisation had already been vigorously challenged within the organisation. Jack Dromey was instrumental in that challenge when he took over the chair of NCCL in 1976

The reason I decided to go to work for NCCL was because I actively supported the work they had done and in particular the work of their women's rights committee on the Equal Pay Act, on the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act and for greater protection of victims of domestic violence and against race discrimination.

Since being elected to the House of Commons in 1982 and during my times in Ministerial Office I have always championed the rights of those subjected to sexual abuse - especially women and children.

I hope The Daily Mail will stop this campaign of smear and innuendo against me. I have done nothing wrong and am guilty of none of their grotesque allegations."

One of the most irritating phrases you will ever hear on television is “the BBC has learnt”. You’d think it meant that due to an original piece of journalism, the BBC has found out something nobody else has. Invariably it means the BBC has switched on Sky News.

Sky use a similar technique by using the phrase “Sky sources have told us.” But in each case it gives the broadcaster cover to hype up a story that might otherwise be considered a little pedestrian. And it perverts the news agenda. But this sort of thing happens every day. Take the current furore about Harriet Harman, the Daily Mail, and the NCCL.

Over the last few days both the BBC and Sky have studiously ignored the front pages of the Daily Mail, which has accused Harriet Harman of, well, I’m not totally sure exactly. It seems they think that because she was legal officer to the NCCL she must have somehow sympathised with the aims and objectives of one of its thousands of members, the Paedophile Information Exchange. It’s a ‘guilt by association’ smear which upon any reasonable examination doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. But day after day the Daily Mail demands that Harman, her husband Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt say ‘sorry’. It’s the same kind of tactic they used on Ed Miliband back in September.

Conservatives have up to now attacked the BBC for not even mentioning the issue, understandably believing that if three Tory politicians had been accused of something similar the BBC might not have been so coy. We’ll never know. However, the BBC could defend its position by pointing out that these allegations are nothing new and were first aired back in 2009. That would be a sustainable editorial position.

But yesterday the game changed when Harriet Harman decided to break cover and respond to the allegations by giving the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg an interview. It turned out to be a bad move. Instead of saying that it was a clear mistake for the NCCL to allow the PIE to be an associate member, she prevaricated and appeared a little shifty. Not only that she compounded her error by accusing the Daily Mail of being hypocritical because it publishes pictures of bikini-clad young women on its website. Women, not girls. So instead of closing down the story, it has merely given all other media outlets the excuse to cover it on the basis that if Harriet Harman has spoken about it, it becomes a legitimate story.

Cue BBC overkill. It’s now leading bulletins on the Today Programme and 5 Live. I haven’t seen Sky News yet this morning, so I can’t comment on what they are doing but as it’s the lead story on their website it’s probable that it is leading their bulletins too.

I’ve steered clear of the story on my LBC show, not because of any desire to be politically correct, but because I genuinely don’t see this as a massive story. I see it as a politically-motivated smear by a newspaper which is besmirching its own good name by running it day after day after day.

Does anyone seriously believe Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt have any paedophile sympathies? No, of course not. They worked for a ramshackle organisation which was run in an anarchic way. Just as anyone with dubious views can join a political party, anyone or any organisation with dubious views could join the NCCL. Does anyone seriously think that Harman, a lowly junior legal officer, had the power to expel a member who had legitimately joined? Presumably to do so would have meant changing the NCCL’s constitution. Perhaps she and her husband tried to do that. Who knows? But remember that one of the NCCL’s aims was to promote freedom of speech for everyone, no matter how vile their views.

The biggest mistake Harriet Harman has made was to give that interview to Newsnight. All it succeeded in doing was fanning the story’s flames and giving other media organisations and newspapers to excuse they needed to cover it. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but the overblown and blanket coverage it is getting is so out of proportion to the lack of coverage it got yesterday, that editors all over the place, but especially the BBC, would do well to examine why they are doing what they are doing. Are they doing this because it is such an important story or because of their collective feeling of guilt that maybe they should have given it some coverage well before today?

When I go into LBC today and we start planning my Drive programme, it will be interesting to see how the story has developed during the day. If I cover it at all – and at the moment my feeling is that I’d rather not – it will be looking at the behaviour of the Daily Mail, more than the behaviour of Harriet Harman. No doubt I will get a shedload of abuse for it, but hey – broad shoulders and all that."
http://www.lbc.co.uk/iain-dales-blog-30195/entry/120/9927

PUBLISHED: 23:32, 26 February 2014 | UPDATED: 00:08, 27 February 2014
Harman's pressure group advertised for members in magazine for paedophiles: New evidence links NCCL to PIE while Harriet was legal chief

PUBLISHED: 01:36, 27 February 2014 | UPDATED: 01:36, 27 February 2014
STEPHEN GLOVER: The Left argue that a sexual free-for-all in the 70s explains their tolerance of child sex abusers. What twisted bunkum